Another one gone - RIP Ric Ocasek

[fitness1]

https://pagesix.com/2019/09/15/the-c...tan-townhouse/

[H165]

Bad news. One of my go-to bands if I just want to rock a little.

[fitness1]

Originally Posted by H165

Bad news. One of my go-to bands if I just want to rock a little.

Just watching Sunday Night Football and the outro music was "Lets Go"

[PTony]

Bummer! Death seems to come in waves of 3 for some reason. My wife and I just found out a HS classmate had passed at 45. Cancer. Life is so short. I guess we make the most of the time we have...while we still have it.

[raysachs]

Kind of a shocker. I guess because of how late the Cars really hit, I always just assumed he was younger than that. I was never a huge fan, but they were still a part of the soundtrack of a few years of my life.

RIP

[fitness1]

Originally Posted by raysachs

Kind of a shocker. I guess because of how late the Cars really hit, I always just assumed he was younger than that. I was never a huge fan, but they were still a part of the soundtrack of a few years of my life.

RIP

Yes - if you were "around" in the late 70's, you got bombarded with a few of their tunes!

[Lkristians]

Raise a glass to a true star. RIP Rick Ocasek. So so sad. Reunited with Benjamin Orr.

[Rockysdad]

Very sad to read this, it seems too many people passing these days.

[rokdog49]

The Cars debut album was "one of those" to me.
The strong Cleveland connection was also a part of my interest and the style of Ocasek's pop sound was kind of ground breaking in its own way.
Iwas a big fan.

[robj144]

RIP and it's too bad. Liked the Cars.

[Brent Hahn]

A shame. I knew him slightly, worked at a a studio with his first wife. Nice guy. First band I knew personally who were as focused on the look as they were on the music.

[Silurian]

Sad to hear this.

[Wade Hampton]

They were a great band in their day. Good songs and a great stage presence. I remember when they were at the pinnacle of their success, the interviewer for a Rolling Stone article asked them why they wore red, white and black clothing onstage. Ric Ocasek answered something to the effect that, well, you know, when they were getting started everybody in the band owned a lot of red, black and white clothing, and restricting themselves to those colors gave them a unified look that looked good onstage and in photographs.

For some reason that's stuck with me, probably because instead of trying to shroud their process with smoke and mirrors and make it seem as though there was something hugely important or "spiritual" about the colors they chose, Ocasek was being very straightforward and talking about the craft that went into what they did.

That was fairly exceptional at the time, when the briefly famous musicians of the day were busy self-mythologizing and trying to convey an impression of indecipherable genius whenever they spoke to the media. In direct contrast, here was a guy taking a very workmanlike approach, saying, in essence, this is what we did and this is why we did it.

Which I found refreshing, in large part because at the time I was figuring out how to perform in public and sell myself onstage as well. Yes, there's art involved, but there's a lot of learnable stagecraft, too.

So here's to you, Ric Ocasek: you wrote some great songs, you married a beautiful Czech supermodel despite looking like a 70's rockstar version of Ichabod Crane, and you did it without being an insufferable, overbearing dork with delusions of grandeur.

"You were just what we needed!"


Wade Hampton Miller

[ChrisE]

The Cars did some of my favorite songs ever. I still listen to them all the time.

Let’s Go
Just What I Needed
Best Friend’s Girlfriend
Bye Bye Love is probably my favorite.

[Bob Womack]

I guess that's not what I needed. I've conversed with Elliot Easton on another board on and off. He seems a nice guy. I'm struck with something Rick said in an article after they played their final gig when they were inducted into the RnR Hall.

Ocasek, in a Rolling Stone interview, described the performance as "a good cap on the bottle" of his career, which also included painting in his later years.

"It’s kind of weird because it’s like a lifetime. It is a lifetime. I had three families during that time. They are like lives that go by and millions of people and things and artists and writers and business people and fans. … It’s a lot of stuff. It’s been a pretty eventful life, I can say."

And his most recent wife (of 28 years) had just broken up with him but she was the one who found him dead. Sad.

Bob